


slivers and fragments (perspective)

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [91]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky's total failure to recognize his own massive psychological progress, Disabled Character, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Mentally Ill Character, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prompt Fic, Reading Aloud, Self-Loathing, coping skills, martyrdom is a shared trait, self-worth is a problem, showering together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 10:17:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4560801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Any idiot can face a crisis; it's the day to day living that wears you out. (Clifford Odets)</p>
            </blockquote>





	slivers and fragments (perspective)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it.
> 
> This one's a collection of edited prompt responses on a general theme. Also please note: characters' opinions on literature et cetera are their own, and have no relation either in correspondence nor conflict to the author's. (For instance, you couldn't PAY ME enough to watch _A Nightmare on Elm Street_.)

_one._

Steve's excuse for reading aloud, to start with, is practicing language. That covers him for Russian, French, German, Spanish and Italian, because he's not good enough in any of the other languages he's chipping away at for there to be any point. But just those five are admittedly a few _years'_ worth of reading time eaten up, given even just the literature famous enough for your average Anglophone to have maybe heard of. 

A lot of it's awful, in the sense that so much Great Literature is awful, and Bucky vetoes any Existentialist crap bar _Le Petit Prince_ , and that one only because there's actually a kind of neat if completely fucking insane vista of mental pictures and moments to go with the overblown ridiculous and occasionally dead wrong philosophizing in there. Otherwise, the Existentialist writers make him want to smack people. The sheer pointless, selfish stupidity of _L'Étranger_ is _still_ irritating as fuck when he thinks about it, which he tries not to do. If he never reads that book again he'll still regret reading it the first time, and if he never thinks about it again Camus still owes him at least seven hours of his life back. 

Bucky doesn't comment on the part where this, all of this, is basically an excuse. Doesn't comment on the part where, after a while, Steve stops bothering to take the extra care to actually get a book in one of the other languages, if something in English catches his eye instead. 

Doesn't comment; manages to get away without commenting. Pretends that this is just a thing Steve's started doing, and that is has nothing to do with the fact that _Bucky's_ noticed a lot of times where Steve talking, where hearing Steve's voice, does something for Bucky's agitation. And Steve's actually about five times better at noticing that shit than he is, so he probably noticed it first. 

Probably because Steve doesn't have a hard time imagining it matters. 

So Bucky pretends it's got nothing to do with that. He pretends because this works, mostly, and because if he pretends he feels less guilty about it. And because reading shit means Steve doesn't have to be constantly thinking about things to say, things to talk about, to fill up the silence with. 

Right now Steve's reading something called _Des vies d'oiseaux_ , which is just about as French as you can get without drowning yourself in the Seine holding a bottle of Burgundy and singing the Marseillaise. Bucky stopped tracking the plot or what's happening (in between passages of meaningful prose) and most of what Steve's actually saying about ten minutes ago. He's okay with that. Steve's sitting half-sideways to the couch with one leg bent up and one bent lying flat, the way he used to do when he was a whole lot smaller, and Bucky's using his knee and calf more or less as a pillow, with the cat on his chest. 

Bucky does notice when Steve pauses. He opens his eyes and tilts his head back to see Steve paused and frowning just slightly at the book in his hands - not so much at the page, as at the whole book, as an object. "What?" Bucky asks. 

"Do you ever - " Steve starts, and then stops, gestures with the book a little helplessly and finishes, "Just, I mean, you know. The _French_." 

Bucky knows exactly what he means, but still can't help dissolving into laughter anyway. It's the expression, really. The expression, the inarticulateness of the question, the fact he does know what Steve means, and maybe at knowing the _face_ Dernier'd make if he'd heard it, the same face he made at Dugan on a regular basis because Dugan really would come right out and say shit like _I don't think you could be more French right now even if you tried._

Because Dum-Dum never did have any God-damn manners.

"I don't think I can take any more French-ness," Steve says, dog-earing the book. "Come for a walk?" 

 

_two._

Bucky's usual resting heart-rate is a hundred and seven beats per minute or, as Steve tends to think about it, ridiculously high. The only time it really drops below that is when the dissociation kicks in and it drops to around thirty four. 

Steve didn't actually mean to find that out, but the first time he noticed the drop it scared the shit out of him, and since then he's found himself counting when he can, against the ticking of a clock or against his own near perpetual forty-five beats per minute resting pulse. He doesn't mention it. There doesn't seem to be any kind of point: the reason for the high end is pretty obvious, and for the low, well - that's what dissociation does. 

One of the things. 

Right now they're lying curled up in bed, extra blanket pulled up against the moment - pretty soon, actually - when Bucky's body-temperature decides to drop like a rock. Steve rests his forehead against the back of Bucky's head, breathes in the smells of sweat and skin, sex and metal; he has one arm around Bucky's ribcage to pull him close, his back against Steve's chest, while Bucky keeps the loose-limbed release he mostly only gets after sex, and only up until he has to think about the rest of the world again. 

Steve's taken to making sure there's a warm enough extra blanket in reach in the living-room as well as on the bed, because he figures these moments are worth sustaining as long as possible. 

He doesn't notice his hand's resting where he can feel Bucky's heart beating for a few minutes; when he does, he counts out of habit. He doesn't quite manage to throttle the soft exhale of pleasant surprise, so that Bucky says, voice drowsy and lazy and still with an edge of sudden awareness to it, "What?" 

And for a second - just a second, and then it's gone - Steve's tempted to lie, or at least to brush it off. Not tempted enough to actually entertain the idea of going through with it, but enough that, well. . . 

"Your heart's beating ninety per minute," he says, because he doesn't damn well lie. But the way he can feel Bucky's heart speed up at least shows why sometimes he wishes he could. 

"And?" Bucky asks, a little more awake. Steve moves a little so he can kiss Bucky's shoulder and the side of his neck, smooth his hand down Bucky's ribs to his waist, trying to wordlessly get across that there's nothing to worry about.

"And that's a good thing," he says, stroking his thumb along the back of Bucky's hip before he wraps his arm around Bucky's waist this time. 

After a minute, Bucky says, "If you say so," in a tone of voice very clearly meant to tell Steve Bucky thinks he's fixated on strange and pointless details. Bucky shifts a little, skin moving against Steve's, kind of almost exactly like his cat does when she's making it clear she's settling in for an actual sleep. Which is also going to go on the hypothetical power-point presentation, some future day. 

Steve lets it go at that, happy he _can_ let it go at that, and closes his eyes.

 

 _three_.

Steve has too much faith in him. 

It's not really a fucking surprise: Steve has too much faith, full-fucking-stop, and if that weren't true he'd still only come up to Bucky's shoulder and might have dropped dead of a heart attack a lifetime ago. And part of Bucky wants to point out that this probably isn't what he wants to bring up as proof of that faith being a bad idea, but just because for fucking once it worked, because of luck or chaos or God having a sheerly fucking warped sense of humour, it _doesn't matter_ \- just because it worked once doesn't mean Steve doesn't have too much faith in everything, anything, anyone and everyone. And especially in Bucky.

Or that it's not a bad idea. 

And today is one of the days it feels like he's holding on with the tips of his fucking fingers. To everything. To anything. But mostly to the edge, the thin line where everything twists sour, twists poisoned, twists dangerously fucking wrong. Where anger turns bitter, turns contemptuous of people beyond a tiny few (maybe only one), and from there it's just such a fucking short step - 

It's hard not to hate. It's there, there's a whole fucking world of it, he could let that drown him and it would be so fucking much easier. To let it stop being a fucking problem when every human body he sees flattens out to an obstacle or a target and to just let himself decide that's all they ever are, because they don't fucking deserve anything else, because nothing and nobody does. 

Didn't used to be like that. He didn't used to hate, didn't fucking . . . feel _anything_ , didn't care. The world used to be narrow and simple and the other thing that would be so fucking easy to would be to let this fucking world find a _new_ fucking narrow, a new fucking simple, to drop all the way through the seething contempt and the calm, cold other side. 

The line's so fucking fragile, sometimes. He can't say days like today are the ones where complete self-destruction seems the _most_ attractive, because fuck, mostly it never - 

Because except for a few details that rip the whole thing to pieces, it almost always does. But those details do rip the whole thing to pieces so it doesn't fucking matter how good it does or doesn't look, it's not a fucking choice he has. 

But Steve has way too much fucking faith in Bucky's ability to stay on the right side of the other choices, the dangerous choices, and he shouldn't. 

And Bucky knows that this morning it's like he fucking tried to outrun the lure of those wrong ones, and on the way he wrenched his shoulder, twisted his knee and cut up his right side doing that, and it didn't work, and it doesn't fucking help: it's not even enough fucking pain to drive through the boiling mess in his head. So he gives up, and he drags himself home because maybe there he'll hit less fucking temptation. 

Stupid to hope that. But maybe. 

In the bathroom he strips off shirt and sweats, looks at the rent in the shirt and the blood and just makes a disgusted noise when he balls it up and throws it in the bathroom garbage and then tries not to think about it. Kicks the sweats and underwear into a corner. 

When he turns on the shower instead of the bath he knows he's being fucking stupid, whether he's pushing himself or punishing himself or both, but he gets in anyway. He twists enough to look down and dig a splinter of glass and a fragment of stone out of the mess on his side and drop them on the floor, nudge them to the drain with one foot. Then he makes himself stand under the water. 

He flinches when the door opens, can't help it. His left hand, flat against the wall, tries to dig in to make a fist and he forces it to relax instead, because he could rip handfuls out of this fucking wall if he's not careful and he doesn't want to. And the thing is, it's completely fucking possible Steve does say something, while Bucky's doing that and staring through the fucking tile and trying not to break his teeth on each other either. He just doesn't hear it, or it doesn't stick in his head if he does. 

He flinches again when the shower door opens and Steve steps in, still can't stop it this time either. 

And doesn't realize the water's lukewarm at best until Steve's reaching past him to turn it up and the heat startles Bucky enough that he takes a deeper breath. And fuck, and _fuck him_ and in the litany of stupid fucking pointless things he's done even just this morning it's fucking depressing how far down the list _trying to gouge at his own brain with cold water_ is. 

Steve puts his hand on Bucky's right shoulder, just resting lightly for a second before he lets it take more pressure, more weight, and slides it down Bucky's arm to his bent elbow, along his forearm to the back of his hand. Steve's fingers work between his, and with Bucky's arm folded under his Steve pulls Bucky's weight back against him. Wraps his other arm across Bucky's chest underneath Bucky's left arm. Pulls him back. Carefully. 

Carefully enough Bucky could stop him by just not fucking helping and he probably should. Steve has too much fucking faith in his . . . in everything. 

Trusts him way too fucking much. 

Bucky leans back against Steve, shoulders to his chest. Feels warm, wet skin against his own until his skin runs out, and then just feels how skin and fat and muscle give against metal until they're compressed on bone underneath. 

He's looking down at the shower floor. There's a here-and-there thin stream of red in the water, as the last of the half-formed clot washes away and his side just bleeds. It's not much. Not enough to matter. 

And he wants to say _Steve you're an idiot_ and he wants to say _you shouldn't fucking be here, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't be taking this fucking risk,_ to tell Steve to stop fucking trusting him this much, but Steve won't stop and the words won't get past Bucky's throat anyway because of the fucking terror that some day Steve _will_ listen, Steve _will_ fucking wake up and do what he should. 

So it slops back like sewage against a wall and makes the shape of words that don't even mean anything anymore, and before Bucky manages to even shape them Steve says, "I'm still not gonna shoot you." 

And fuck, it isn't funny, not really - but it is, and claws out something like a laugh anyway. 

"You should," he manages, turning his head a little. 

"I'll make a note of your suggestion in my report," Steve says, excessively deadpan. And it shouldn't make - 

Bucky shouldn't let it make him relax, let it make every fucking thing he knows fade back now so he can pretend he knows something else, even for a while. It shouldn't do that anyway. Does, every fucking time Steve does something like this. 

Does, because of what it means, that Steve's fucking trying to find a new way to make it a fucking joke. 

It works, and he twists so Steve lets him go, turns to lean against the tile wall so he's facing Steve instead. 

When he says, "Fuck you, Rogers," he knows he sounds tired. Then he reaches up with his left hand and gently shoves the side of Steve's head when Steve's response is an overacted expression of thoughtful consideration. 

Steve leans forward to kiss Bucky's forehead; Bucky tilts his head and with his left hand pulls Steve's mouth to his instead, right falling to rest at Steve's hip. Gives up into the kiss for a moment, dragging in the way Steve responds and clutching at it like a lifeline, which it kind of fucking is, and tangling it around everything, wrapping it around himself like a tourniquet. 

Steve kisses his jaw, the space between his eyes. He rests his hands on Bucky's hips and then says, glancing down at Bucky's right side, "You know that needs stitches." 

"It does not," Bucky says, dismissive, and rolls his eyes at the look of pure Patience Steve gives him. 

"It's a cut, not a scrape, and the edges don't meet," Steve says, still Patient. 

"Barely," Bucky objects and then flicks Steve's ear with his left hand when Steve looks theatrically upwards. 

"Bucky," Steve says, with a tone to match his look, "will you please let me sew up the laceration that's currently bleeding on the damn shower floor?" 

The glare Bucky aims at Steve's head is . . . not real, it's a mask, it's play-acting, but he does it anyway because it takes them somewhere other than knee deep in his shit and Steve won't let this go. Bucky knows Steve won't let it go. 

"Fine," he says. "Nanny." 

"Thank you," Steve says, still all patience, and Bucky reaches up to mess up his wet hair. 

 

 _four_. 

Steve doesn't notice the song at first. It's there, he notices there's some kind of music playing and not on the big speakers. But it's at least two repeats before it manages to work it's way past the haze of legal . . . stuff in Steve's mind, as he stares at the pdf of the, well, stuff, that one of Tony's many, many lawyers sent over about merchandise and trademark and everything else. 

He'll go over it with one of them sometime this week before he even thinks about signing anything, of course, but he likes to look through on his own first so he at least knows where he's totally lost. Or where he thinks he's _not_ totally lost and it turns out he is. Basically, he likes to be able to run through what he _thinks_ something says and have the experts agree or tell him he's nuts. He learned _that_ one quick, back in the day. 

The third time through, though, something about it tugs at him. Maybe it's the soprano singer's voice on the high note, almost like crystal in audible form. Maybe his mind's just looking for an out, an escape from clauses and subclauses and "thus" and "therefore"s. Either way, he notices the song and he notices it's the third time through and finally, he notices it sounds like it's coming from both the bedroom and tinny smart-phone speakers. 

And some of that doesn't make sense. 

After a minute, Steve gets up and goes down the hall. 

Bucky's sitting on the floor beside the bed, one leg bent up and the other fallen to the side. The kitten's lying with her front half on Bucky's lower leg, near his hip, and her bottom half on the floor in front of it. Bucky's left arm hangs loose by his side; his right rests on his vertical knee, holding the phone in his hand, hand dangling from his wrist. He's staring through the floor, but it isn't the blank thousand yard stare that sounds Steve's mental warning bells. At least, not right now - instead, there's the faint frown of trying to figure something out. 

The German unrolls into meaning on the stuttered delay, because Steve's out of practice. The words aren't anything special, the kind of thing you find in lieder a lot - rapturous descriptions of a sunset. He doesn't think the words are the point. 

Bucky looks up at him and Steve says, "Hey," quietly. 

Bucky makes a tiny gesture of acknowledgement, and then looks down at the floor again as Steve crosses the room to sit beside him. 

Something's off, that much is obvious; even as Steve comes to sit down, the song comes to its end and Bucky's finger presses the touch-screen to restart it. And Steve sits, not saying anything, while it plays through again, and Bucky hits the touchscreen again, and Steve resists the urge to take the phone and put the song on repeat. Bucky knows how his phone works. Steve can't assume there isn't some kind of reason he's rewinding it by hand every time. 

It's not that long, two minutes and a bit. But it's kind of a lovely song, even if the words are lacklustre. And if it's being any kind of anchor, Steve can handle listening to the same lied a few dozen times. A hundred damn times, honestly. Tuning out a song that gets repetitive really isn't that big a deal.

More important, way more important than that is the part where this is the first time Bucky's _ever_ come here, come _here_ , to this room, to their bedroom, for this. For when he's off or edgy or needs some kind of retreat. First time their bedroom's ever been a sanctuary. At least, the first time without Steve bringing him here. The first time on his own. 

The first time, maybe, that Bucky's thought it's _his_ , that it's _his space_ , as much as it's Steve's. And to keep from messing that up, Steve can listen to this stupid song from here till kingdom come. 

Steve slides over so he can stretch one leg out behind Bucky, under the bed. Let the other bend in front of him so their ankles cross. 

Reaches left hand over to rest on the opposite side of Bucky's neck, thumb moving just barely against Bucky's throat. 

After a minute, and another tap to repeat the song, Bucky turns his face towards Steve and leans over to rest his forehead against Steve's shoulder. 

 

 _five_. 

On Thursday's morning run Bucky does something that rips him the Hell up: right arm needing stitches in two places, along with his right hip and left thigh, plus with abrasions on the left side of his face, eyebrow, temple, cheek back to jaw. He only lets Steve sew up the two on his arm, takes the suture kit back and does the rest himself. He leaves again in the afternoon, quietly and without saying anything, and isn't back until just before more or less normal bedtime. 

Steve doesn't ask. 

As him not-asking lasts five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen and twenty, he watches the braced tension work its way out of Bucky's shoulders, hips and knees, watches them work properly as joints again instead of holding themselves ready to get hit. By the time Steve turns off his bedside light and settles down under the covers, on his right side, free hand resting on Bucky's hip, even Bucky's jaw's managed to unclench enough there's no reason to worry he's going to chip a tooth. 

Bucky doesn't sleep Thursday night, but at least he doesn't go anywhere. He's gone early Friday morning, but he pretty conspicuously leaves behind the shells of four eggs and two apple-cores, otherwise known as the fastest and easiest way to force a very basic meal down his throat. 

It's also an apology, and an acknowledgement. 

"You worried?" Sam asks over the phone, because seeing as Bucky's not here Steve figures he might as well call, turn speaker on and do something useful with his hands. Currently, that's putting away dishes, and he rubs at an itch on his forehead with his wrist because he's got a clean mug in each hand. 

"I dunno," he says, honestly. "Depends on how you wanna define worry, I guess. I kinda suspect he mostly can't handle knowing that he's being an asshole, and something's turned the inside of his head to enough sandpaper he can't not _be_ an asshole, so he's isolating and taking it out on himself. On top of whatever the sandpaper's scraping off." 

There's a pause before Sam says, "Thanks for that, I may never get rid of the image of someone actually sliding an actual brain into an actual skull lined with sandpaper now." 

"I could always draw you a picture," Steve says, bland. "Really lock it down." 

"Yeah, I'll pass, thanks," Sam retorts. 

"The thing is," Steve starts, and then sighs. "You know we have a copy of the DSM, right? It was one of Tony's original stack, his 'I show my feelings with stuff' offering back when Bucky first came home." 

"I remember," Sam says. 

"Want to guess where the spine's broken?" Steve asks, closing up the dishwasher and snagging the phone off the windowsill to go stand on the balcony, turning off speaker-mode as he goes. 

This time he hears Sam sigh, now more or less right in his ear. 

"Personality disorders," Sam replies, "probably Cluster-B with a big crack for Borderline and Antisocial, and then maybe Dependent in Cluster-C." 

"Gold star for Mr Wilson," Steve says. He leans on the balcony railing. "Not that he probably needs to look anymore, but we both know that's not how it works." 

Sam says, "Personally, I'm still sticking with my diagnosis of Total Clusterfuck Disorder, because nothing else's accurate or adequate, but you're not the one who needs to hear that." 

"No," Steve agrees, "I am not." He grimaces. "Not that it would fucking matter if any of them were. I mean if any of them were the right diagnosis. I think if anybody's got a right to a Goddam personality disorder - " 

"You want another miracle speech?" Sam offers. In the background of his phone, Steve thinks he can hear the noise of an email alert, maybe a couple others. 

"I'm good, I'm just kinda sad and pissed off at the dead again," Steve replies. "I'm not keeping you from anything?" 

"You are _saving_ me," Sam says, voice going a little bit hard, "from the really fucking overpowering desire to call a so-called colleague in New Hampshire and tell her to quit social work and go become a hairdresser so she stops fucking up people's lives, which is the kind of thing that'll get me in deep shit. So we're good. Oh, and that reminds me: you are frustrated enough about this to be cursing, Steve. In case you hadn't noticed." 

"Yeah, you're right, I caught that," Steve acknowledges. "Anyway. The point is, none of that fits, it wouldn't really matter if it did because there's ways to handle that, but it doesn't matter, because there's stuff he can't actually stand the idea of being. And all of that," and Steve sighs again, "is old, old news, so 'worried' isn't really the right word. I dunno, any language out there have a word for 'the state of seriously wishing you could just find the right thing to punch to solve any given problem and sad and frustrated you can't'?" 

"Finnish, maybe," Sam suggests. 

"What's making you want to yell at some lady in New Hampshire?" Steve asks, partly because he's got nothing else useful to say now that he's got everything out in words and is pretty sure he isn't secretly extra worried and trying to ignore it - and partly because now he's curious. "Assuming you can tell me." 

"Fuck, man," Sam says, surprising Steve, "don't ask me that unless you got at least half an hour to listen to this whole clusterfuck, alright? Because seriously, I get started on this - " There's a kind of frustration in his voice Steve hasn't heard much from him, and he feels his mouth quirk. 

"Strangely enough, my schedule's kinda empty right now," he says. "Fire away."

"You asked for it," Sam replies, fast enough that it's pretty obvious _he_ 's the one who really, really needs to vent, for once. 

 

An hour and a bit later, Steve can see why. Sam's job's always struck him as the living manifestation of _better to light a candle than curse the darkness_ , but usually with the old neighbourhood's cynical addition of, "yeah, so you can toss it in and burn the place down once you got a good look and seen how bad it all is." 

Steve's also got a feeling Sam's using him, not quite as a sounding board, but a kind of mental direction to put all the desire-to-punch-people in, to point the frustration even just in explaining the situation, so the rest of his mind can move other stuff around and figure out what to do, and Steve's happy enough for that. Happy enough to be around to provide it. When Sam finishes with, _and basically, in absence of bashing people's heads together until the stupid falls out being, you know, a viable fucking choice, I'm gonna act like the last three years didn't happen and start all over with this woman and hope that does something,_ Steve recommends a coffee and maybe a walk, and then takes his own advice. 

Starbucks is mostly empty, so Steve ends up talking to Sheena for a while about whether or not she wants to try for shift supervisor at the store, or another job, and then about art school and how it's changed, because her twin brother's enrolling for the next quarter. It's nice, actually, and it makes for at least a couple passed hours before he ends up coming home. 

It's harder for Bucky to come home after times like this if Steve's still in the condo. He gets that. 

And whatever it is that's made the bedroom enough _his_ in Bucky's head that he can retreat there is sticking. Steve's grateful for that, and maybe when it's been unremarkable for six months or so he'll feel comfortable asking what exactly made the switch. He knows it's an improvement, bone deep and absolute, even if he couldn't explain to someone else why: it just is, it means what it means, and it's a relief that it sticks. 

So that's still good, even if the part where Bucky's sitting on the floor leaning on the side of the bed with his knees bent in front of him indicates something that isn't. Though it's a good sign that he looks up and directly at Steve, when Steve comes in: at Steve, and then up ceiling-ward in a complicated, familiar expression and gesture of his right hand that means, _I don't even fucking know._

Bucky's angry and tired and looks it; he's in a sweatshirt he ripped the neck out of so it sits more over his collarbone than his throat, over a Y-back, sweatshirt sleeves both pushed back almost to his elbows, the seams at the hems of this pair of jeans ripped to make them just that much longer, so he's stepping on them. 

Abrikoska's curled up on the bed right by his head, so he's been here for a little while at least. 

Steve sits down more or less across from Bucky, leaning his back against the dresser that lives on that side of the room. Watches Bucky confine telling him he doesn't have to do this to a silent look, one that he answers with a shrug: he doesn't have to do anything, and they both know it. 

Because the thing is, short of actual dissociation (and even most of the time then) Steve can't come in the condo without Bucky having enough warning early enough to be doing something, even pretending to do something like read or even play a stupid game on the tablet (and his score on every single game King's ever put out is terrifying) if he really doesn't want Steve to notice, respond, and wait. 

If Bucky really doesn't want to talk about it. 

Sometimes he still can't. There've been times like this where all that happens is silence until something about Bucky's spine or the way he holds his shoulders lets Steve know that Bucky's giving up, for now, and Steve finds them something else for distraction. Or until Bucky gets frustrated and angry with himself and gets up and goes. _Can't_ and _doesn't want to_ are completely different dances, God knows. 

Bucky rests the side of his elbows against his knees, each hand loosely holding the opposite forearm (and Steve is looking to see that the left's hold on the right is loose) and his forehead on his arms. For a minute. Then he sits up. 

Says, "I gave up," and swallows. Says, "A lot." Looks down at his arms and digs one nail of his right hand into one of the grooves on his left. "You'd think giving up," he goes on, "is something you only do once, but turns out it's not." His eyes close and he says, "I'd fucking give up, I'd give, I'd break I'd fucking do what they wanted but it never stuck and something, some - " He swallows again and looks up. "Someone would fuck up, someone would let their guard down, get too close and it all . . ." he opens his left hand, and then closes it, looks at it, turns it over and spreads the fingers again, mouth twisting. 

"I couldn't get out," he says, flat, voice scraping like a knife on a stone, "I couldn't win I couldn't make them kill me I couldn't die but if some fucking peon fucked up I could beat his face in and snap his neck and crush his ribs and every fucking thing else and I always, always fucking did and giving up never stuck." 

It'd be almost impressive, Steve thinks, how the fucked up on the inside of Bucky's brain manages to turn this into something to be ashamed of, except that Steve doesn't have any room in him to be impressed by that. Other things, sure. Lots of other things. But they're taking all the space. 

"Prisoner's duty is to escape," Steve says, quietly, when Bucky stops; there's a fifty-fifty chance it'll make Bucky snarl, but even that'll get him over the sudden stasis, over getting stuck there. This time he just exhales, short and sharp like the air's jerked out of him, and shakes his head, half-smile all twisted up. 

"That was never going to happen," he says. 

"Did, though," Steve says, after a second's hesitation, one of the moments where part of him thinks _what the Hell_ and throws it in. "Just took a long time." As Bucky shakes his head, Steve adds, "And we're not talking about kids duped by recruiting posters, Buck. Anyone who stuck with HYDRA, took up with them then - they fucking knew what they were doing, and they fucking decided to do it. If we were talking about anyone other than you, you'd _know_ they fucking deserved it. You'd at _least_ know that there's nothing wrong with defending yourself from someone who's fucking kidnapped you, locked you up and tortured you. Or held you down so other people could. And that's all you ever did."

Bucky closes his eyes and shakes his head, says quietly, "Steve, I fucking killed them because they were there - " 

" - and they were there because they thought Zola was right. That he had a right to do what he did, including to you," Steve cuts him off. "In spite of knowing what HYDRA did. In spite of the _Valkyrie_ and _all_ the people he meant to kill with it. In spite of HYDRA _losing_ , having to exist like a secret fucking parasite - Jesus, Bucky, not _one_ of them was there by accident. You know that." 

Bucky looks down at his hands again, and doesn't answer. He also doesn't pull away or resist when Steve slides closer, right leg bending at the knee to hook under Bucky's and left curling behind him under the bed, so Steve can cradle the back of Bucky's head and rest his forehead against Bucky's. 

Bucky rests his left hand on Steve's upper arm and doesn't say anything. Steve shifts his hand, strokes his thumb along Bucky's cheekbone. "It's over," he says, "it's done, and you don't have a single fucking thing to be ashamed of and I will keep fucking telling you that," he goes on, over Bucky's quiet broken laugh, as Bucky's left hand moves to Steve's wrist, "until you believe the truth, or we're both dead. Whatever comes first. I'm not going anywhere," he finishes. "I can wait." 

"You're a fucking idiot," Bucky says, with no heat. "And you're fucking biased." 

"I'll call the Pope," Steve threatens, because it's something he thought about the other day - after he saw something on the news as it played in a store - that made him laugh privately for at least ten minutes, and it gets a slightly strangled, disbelieving laugh out of Bucky now. "I will," Steve says. "I will call the fucking Vatican and take this up with Pope Francis and then what're you going to do? I'm pretty sure they'll take my fucking call, too. I've been waiting almost a hundred years to argue with a pontiff, it might as well be now, and _this_ won't even be one of the things we argue about." 

Bucky's shaking his head, and if the laugh's still strangled and twisted, he's also still laughing, sitting up and pulling his fingers and thumb over his eyes. "Fuck," he manages, "Steve - " 

Steve cradles his head again, leans forward to kiss his forehead and says, "You won, Buck. It took a Hell of a long time but you did it and you got out. You won." 

When Bucky shakes his head again, minutely, Steve adds, "And you still can't make me hate you. Or disgust me or put me off or anything - Bucky," he says, and waits until Bucky looks up. Lets his hand fall so there's no . . . distraction, maybe, from the words. "I missed you," he says. "I want you, I love you, I admire you, I want you here, and none of that is ever going to change. My hand to God." 

He can see that Bucky's biting down on the inside of his mouth, decides to push past all of it with, "And you shouldn't stay here on the floor, your back's gonna hate you." 

Bucky's right hand opens and closes a few times. Steve can see him reaching for the composure, for the evenness in his voice when he says, "Steve, my back always fucking hates me." 

"Okay," Steve says, "so it'll hate you more. Come sit in the living room," he adds, "I'm gonna put the Feynman lecture back on and see where I screwed up with those stupid lemon bars." 

Steve can see the wince when Bucky gets up, knows he's right about Bucky's back twisting up. Once he's in the kitchen and Bucky's settling on the flattened futon Steve digs into the freezer for one of the cold packs and tosses it to him. Bucky ends up lying along one of the longer roll cushions, ice-pack under his ribs, arm braced on the cushion and top, bent leg just in front of it. 

Eventually Abrikoska pads out of the bedroom and leaps up beside him. By the time she's flopped down on her side and is idly gnawing on Bucky's right hand, Steve's willing to pay slightly more attention to the recipe than to Bucky. 

 

_six._

Anger is a lot of things, and one of them is self defense. 

He knows that. Even when it's anger at himself, even when he's ripping up the inside of his own fucking head, he knows that and knows why he's clutching at being angry, fucking infuriated with his own fucking failure to . . . find the magic spell. Make everything better. Why he fucking acts like if he could just hit himself hard enough, it'd all work. 

He knows a lot of things, actually, because the way the world is now it fucking hands you knowledge on a platter, practically fucking forcefeeds you anyway and he'd gone out and tried. Desperately fucking tried. Like if he could just figure out the why he could . . .

Like he'd have some control. And he can't even say it didn't fucking help because not knowing why anything was happening the way it did was worse. He knows it was. Fuck, partly he knows it was because these days he can fucking watch his head opening up stuff it couldn't even touch a year ago because a year ago he was lucky if he made it through a day without needing to be put down and if he managed that every day it was still fucking luck. 

So he knows how ripping himself apart can be fucking self defense. Even what from. Because at least anger is something. At least it fills up the space. 

At least it's a distraction from everything he fucking knows. 

There's a baby cat on the post beside him and Bucky watches her for a minute, watches her breathe in her sleep. And she's a distraction, too. Another thing to fill up the space. Like TV shows, like movies, like endless nattering voices on the radio, the stereo, whatever he's got near him at any given moment. Like books. Like vitriol and loathing, inward or outward it doesn't really matter. Like the endless, pointless circle of days he drags himself through, like it matters. Fill up the space where other people have something and where he . . . doesn't. 

He could still sit and stare at an empty wall for hours, and an awful lot of the fucking memories he was so fucking desperate to get play like faded, overexposed movies: sight and sound washed out and nothing else. And it bleeds into the now, leeches colour and volume from everything else and this is depersonalization, and this is derealization, and he knows that too, and knowing doesn't help. 

He's been staring out the window for a while, this evening. Watching the human flow, as people come home from school or work or go out for food, or whatever the fuck it is they're doing. Watching them weave in and out of lives and trying to remember how that works. He did it, once. He was good at it, once. 

At least, if memory isn't a lie. If he used to be something more than a bunch of fucking anxious, violent tics strung together in a subtly freakish human shell. 

Steve's been in the kitchen most of that while, and if Bucky assumed he was making some kind of food what he comes out of it with is just coffee, sugar spoon still in each of the mugs, and he puts them on the window sill side by side. 

Tilts his head and says, "You okay?" and Bucky drags his eyes away from the people who might as well be ants and makes himself look at Steve, Steve's face. 

Remembers, for a heartbeat, being in the middle of fucking Austria and kind of wanting to punch that face when he found out how it got there, how it got to look like what it did now, and then put together what that meant. Wanting to do a lot of other things, too, including laughing hysterically until he cried or threw up or both, wanting to shoot himself, and just wanting to sit down and say, _Fine. Your fucking war now, I never fucking wanted it anyway, I_ wanted _to stay home and work in the fucking factory_ , and go to sleep. 

Really wanting to shoot himself for wanting that last part. 

Remembers like it's a tape he watched, a story he heard, like the edges of a fucking dream. Remembers he didn't do any of it, was never really going to, just told Steve he was a fucking idiot and fixed the parts of the "get back to the Allied position from here" plan that were broken, the way that kind of thing is always broken when it's someone's first fucking time in the field. Any field. 

Then he remembers that Steve just asked something, shakes his head and manages to remember what it was. Ends up saying, "Dunno. Define 'okay.'"

Steve half-smiles with more sadness than humour and says, "I think that basically means 'no'." He picks up his mug, gives it a completely unneeded stir. The stainless steel rings against the ceramic. "Gonna tell me?" he says, gaze shifting up without moving his head. And Bucky sighs and rakes his hair back from his face. 

"Dunno," he says again. And when he goes on, "Gonna tell me why you fucking bother with this? A _reason_ this time?" _he_ probably deserves a punch in the face, honestly, and it's half a nasty dig and half an actual question, but the question's like a fucking broken record and he knows - oh, another one of the fucking things he knows - that the part that makes him keep asking is the same part that won't ever fucking accept the answer so it should just shut the fuck up. 

And if he were half a fucking human being he'd tell Steve to forget it, to apologize, but he isn't, so he doesn't. Can't.

Instead of the wince, or the frustration, or anything else he expects to cross Steve's face, for a second there's something soft, and then Steve looks down at his mug again, mouth quirking up a little. "Dunno," he says, mimicking Bucky's tone a little. "Why'd you get your nose broken by Robbie Brandon?" 

The objection - "He didn't break it, it just bled - " - that's reflexive. And in a proper world, or proper person, he'd probably find himself caught up somehow, get hit by a vision of a long-destroyed alleyway, hear voices that grew up and broke and got deeper and then died probably a long time ago. Remember what it felt like when Robbie's fist hit his face. 

He doesn't. That one's gone. He just remembers that it happened. Remembers that a stupid, stupid tiny kid going to get himself beaten probably even bloody, that the stupid tiny kid started the fight because Kittering stole some little girl's food. Remembers that suddenly that stupid tiny kid mattered. 

And that the stupid tiny kid got defensive and sullen as hell about being rescued, too. 

Bucky looks down at the mug still on the sill that he hasn't touched, and Steve says, "Buck, that's the only kind of real answer there is." 

And fuck there are spies and con-artists the fucking world over who'd kill to be able to look that sincere, have that kind of solemn eyes and earnest face. 

When Bucky says, "We're both fucking stupid," he's maybe admitting something, and tries not to look at it, and that's probably why he ends up half-blocking Steve's hand with his left one when Steve goes to touch his face. Which is fucking stupid by itself, so he's lying when he adds, "You even more than me." 

But Steve twists his fingers, catches Bucky's hand around the back and kisses the side of his wrist. And it's pointless, because that hand can't even really feel that. And it isn't pointless, because Steve's honestly probably been fucking better at acting like it's part of Bucky's body than he has himself. And he doesn't know what he's supposed to fucking do with this, with Steve, with everything, or anything, at all. 

He tucks his fingers under Steve's chin, feels shape and weight and the give of skin into bone and lifts it up, then lets his hand fall. And Steve reaches over and tucks Bucky's hair behind his left ear. 

"You did get your nose broken," Steve says, soft. "So you're stuck with that. And with me." His eyes turn bright for a second and he adds, too solemnly, "So shut up."

And there are rituals and rituals and sometimes Bucky wonders if there'd be anything left if he gave them up, but he doesn't want to. So he does reach over to shove Steve's shoulder, and he does say, "Punk." 

And Steve says, "Jerk." 

And then he says, "You're my best friend. You're stuck with that, too." And finishes with, "And you should come eat, or you're gonna end up feeling worse." 

This time Bucky pushes him hard enough to bump the couch, which bumps the cat-tree and makes the kitten protest. Steve just grins.

 

_seven._

When Steve floats to the top of a really strange dream about a town meeting, he has no idea what time it is. It's dark, it's quiet, and moving into line of sight for his phone or the alarm clock would mean moving. And that he's _not_ going to do, because Bucky's right arm is resting along the bottom of his ribs and Bucky's using his shoulder as a pillow. 

And is actually asleep. Really asleep, deeply asleep; on the edge, it can be hard to tell if someone's one thing or the other, but deep sleep has its own tells. With Bucky the tells are mostly just enough slack in any and every muscle that he doesn't _look_ tense anymore, and lips just parted, and eyelashes pretty near resting on the top of his cheeks. 

Since for the last almost-a-week he's been clawing ninety-to-one-eighty minute naps scattered maybe two or three in twenty four hours, and Steve's mostly woken up to Bucky reading or listening to something, Steve is not about to mess this up. 

Sleep, Steve's discovered in his reading, is still one of those things where the bottom line is mostly all science knows about exactly what it does and why is still guesses, but experts have a pretty good idea of what happens when you start messing it up as compared to when it's working right. And this, what's called slow-wave sleep, makes most of the difference in the world when it comes to emotional health, cognitive function and memory integration. 

So of course it's the one Bucky has a hard time getting to, and a harder time staying in as long as he needs. 

Whether being messed up makes it difficult, or because it's difficult he has a harder time dealing with the messed up . . .Steve figures you'd have a hard time even figuring out which one of those _is_ chicken versus egg, let alone which came first. 

The point right now is, Steve's really, really not moving. 

It's been a hard week. Mostly hard for Bucky, with mostly just worry for Steve: Bucky says he doesn't know what's wrong and Steve believes him, but that means Bucky's even more stubborn than usual about _no don't stay don't miss things don't skip things go away, go have a life_. Half the time Steve goes just because he knows if he stays Bucky'll feel guilty about it, which means that he's going out to avoid making Bucky feel guilty for being miserable around Steve and making Steve feel guilty that he can't do anything concrete about it. 

_And with that,_ he'd said to Bruce, wryly, over coffee, _I'm pretty sure we've officially crossed over into total madness._

_No, not yet,_ Bruce had replied, blandly, _wait for another recursion, then it's madness. Currently, just inappropriately amusing - the kind that makes you want to bang your head on something until it all stops._

Then he'd distracted Steve for a couple hours describing his current side-project, except that Steve suspects those hours actually counted as a remedial lesson in what these days is high-school level physics. 

Steve yawns, covering his mouth automatically, and then resting his hand on Bucky's lower right arm. Abrikoska sleeps curled up in the curve behind Bucky's neck, a small knot of shadow leeched of all her colour in the pale light, half twisted over with her head upside down and her front paws stretched out. It's fragile, as moments go. 

Steve'll take it, though.


End file.
